The Alchemyst Chapter 16 Summary

How It All Goes Down

She expands her hearing powers using a handy spell she learned from an Inuit shaman.

This enables her to overhear the Morrigan arguing with Dee.

Apparently, the Morrigan thinks Hekate should be punished for taking out the Morrigan's birds.

But Dee says Hekate is untouchable.

Why? The Morrigan counters by saying she's not the only Elder on the West Coast—she knows where Bastet sleeps.

We don't know who this Bastet is, but she sure as shootin' sounds fierce.

Light bulb moment: Perenelle realizes that the Morrigan is prepared to awaken Bastet and attack Hekate's Shadowrealm, all to get the pages of the Codex back.

That's bad news, it turns out, because Perenelle knows Bastet has the body of the beautiful young woman and the head of the cat. That wouldn't be scary (just weird), if it weren't for the fact that she is also totally powerful.

Poor Perenelle. She's worried about whether Nicholas and the twins will be safe when Hekate's powers are attacked.

We interrupt this program to bring you the story of a girl who could talk to the dead. In other words, let's get Perenelle's back-story:

When she was a little girl, she could see stuff others couldn't.

It wasn't until she was seven that she understood that not everyone could see the flickering black and white images she did.

It turns out these images were the shades of ghosts, which she knew because one of them looked an awful lot like her grandmother, Mamom.

Perenelle soon realized that ghosts could not see certain colors—blues and greens and some yellows—so she encouraged those colors into her own aura to create a veil of protection, which would prevent the dead from seeing her.

And now, back to our regular programming.

Perenelle now concentrates on her pale ice-white aura and takes off the colors she added to block the ghosts.

Suddenly, ghosts flock to her.

The ghost of Jefferson Miller, who Perry knew when living, tells her that she's in the basement of Enoch Enterprises, under the Coit Tower.

Perenelle sees that his ghost seems attached to this spot (which makes sense when we learn that ghosts are nothing more than remnants of the person's aura combined with a particular attachment to a place).

Hey, she can fix that. She deletes a password and asks Jefferson if he would like help leaving this place.

Miller says he would indeed: he'd like to join his wife across the Shadowrealm.

In exchange for her help, Miller agrees to take a message to Perry's husband.